JEDDAH: The number of artisans, both male and female, in the Kingdom has reached 9,240, 12 percent of whom are in the Eastern Province, according to Abdullatif Al-Banyan of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTNH) in the Eastern Province.
During a meeting of the National Program for Handicrafts, in which 60 people from the public and private sector participated, he said 44 professions in the field were facing the possibility of dying out.
He said the aim of the meeting was to introduce the participants to the program as one of the initiatives of the national strategy for supporting the handicrafts in the cultural, social and economic sectors.
“Handicrafts and their skills represent the most beautiful aspects of heritage and creativity, as well as to how people lived and thought,” said Al-Banyan. He described handcrafts and creative arts as “a cultural legacy that contributes to improving income and living standards and providing employment opportunities.”
He said the SCTNH aims to “develop handicrafts and support productive families in marketing their products through festivals, activities and exhibitions in coordination with charities and marketing centers, as well as conducting courses by experts and specialists in the field.”
According to Al-Hareth Al-Omari, director of the Department of Training and Development at the SCTNH, charities, private, and government institutions aim to support the National Program for Handicrafts by providing training, investment and support as well as creating job opportunities in the sector.
The supervisor of the program in the Eastern Province, Abdul Majeed Al-Samael, said the SCTNH had worked in coordination with several bodies to identify craftsmen in the area, noting that craftsmen had participated in some of the most important cultural activities in the Eastern Province.
Saudi artisans prevent 44 skills from dying out
Saudi artisans prevent 44 skills from dying out
‘One in a Million’: Syrian refugee tale wows Sundance
PARK CITY: As a million Syrians fled their country's devastating civil war in 2015, directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes headed to Turkey where they would meet a young girl who encapsulated the contradictions of this enormous migration.
In Ismir, they met Isra'a, a then-11-year-old girl whose family had left Aleppo as bombs rained down on the city, and who would become the subject of their documentary "One In A Million," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.
For the next ten years, they followed her and her family's travels through Europe, towards Germany and a new life, where the opportunities and the challenges would almost tear her family apart.
There was "something about Isra'a that sort of felt to us like it encapsulated everything about what was happening there," MacInnes told an audience at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Friday.
"The obvious vulnerability of her situation, especially as being a child going through this, but that at the same time, she was an agent.
"She wasn't sitting back, waiting for other people to save her. She was trying to fight, make her own way there."
The documentary mixes fly-on-the-wall footage with sit-down interviews that reveal Isra'a's changing relationship with Germany, with her religion, and with her father.
It is this evolution between father and daughter that provides the emotional backbone to the film, and through which tensions play out over their new-found freedoms in Europe -- something her father struggles to adjust to.
Isra'a, who by the end of the film is a married mother living in Germany, said watching her life on film in the Park City theatre was "beautiful."
And having documentarists follow her every step of the way as she grew had its upsides.
"I felt like this was something very special," she told the audience after the screening. "My friends thought I was famous; it made making friends easier and faster."
